Erling Haaland\u2019s new look may have drawn attention on Friday, after he was shown jokingly feeling around his now-shaven head. But the absence of his hair has not affected the part that matters most: his finishing.<\/p>\n
The City forward delivered another decisive performance against Crystal Palace, scoring twice to keep his remarkable record against them intact. Rayan Cherki, aged 23, also netted a brace on the night to open his Premier League account for the new campaign.<\/p>\n
Haaland\u2019s first goal came from a powerful leap, as he rose above American defender Chris Richards to meet a hanging cross from Antoine Semenyo. His second was more familiar territory. After moving across the edge of the area and accelerating toward goal, he was released by a through-ball from Phil Foden before driving a left-footed effort past Dean Henderson. By the end of the contest, the 6’5″ forward had two goals from five shots and 20 touches.<\/p>\n
The result extended a run that has become routine for Palace: Haaland has now scored in every Premier League meeting with the Eagles. Across six matches against the south London side, he has collected 10 goals.<\/p>\n
His first league appearance against Crystal Palace came nearly four years ago, on August 27, 2022. That day at the Etihad, he announced himself with a hat-trick in a comeback win after Palace had gone 2-0 up, with City eventually taking a 4-2 victory.<\/p>\n
Since then, every meeting has taken place at Selhurst Park. He also scored twice in his previous outing there in December 2025, helping City to a 3-0 win.<\/p>\n
The victory also marked Haaland\u2019s first goals since his stellar World Cup debut.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Haaland struck twice again against Palace, extending a perfect scoring run in the Premier League.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18802,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[465,238,172],"tags":[1836,59,180],"class_list":["post-18803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crystal-palace","category-manchester-city","category-epl","tag-2026-27-premier-league","tag-featured","tag-player-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}